For those of you still waiting for us…

Writing about the waitlist is a dangerous exercise for me: I don’t want to be either excessively rosy or unnecessarily gloomy. Today, though, I’ll throw caution to the wind and try to shed a little light for you. Let’s start with the chronology of the waitlist so far.

March: We made a bunch of offers of a space on the waitlist for each program.

March/April: Applicants let us know if they wanted to wait.

April 20/May 1: Admitted applicants responded to their offers of admission. We added everything up to figure out whether the number of enrolling students was too low, too high, or just right.

May 1-3: The staff sifted through the boxes of application files of those who had decided to remain on the waitlist.

And that brought us to Friday, when the Admissions Committee offered admission to a very small group of MALD applicants on the waitlist. Why such a small group? We need to ensure we meet that “just right” number, but we’ll go slowly so that we don’t end up with more students than will fit in the school. Having made the offers, we’ll wait for the responses, and check the numbers again.

What does this mean for you, if you weren’t in that small group? More waiting, I’m afraid, but we admitted so few students that you should not draw any further conclusions about your prospects.

For now, continue to update us on any changes to your profile. I usually suggest that applicants decide how long they want to wait. Some people have decided that they’d wait until May 1, but no later. Others decide that, so long as they can give their employer two weeks’ notice, they’ll take an offer as late as August. Most people fall between those two points.

Finally, I realize I’m not answering a key question, regarding how many more people we’ll admit. I simply don’t know. What I can say is that we’re watching those numbers for all degree programs, and we always aim to have our entering class defined by the end of June.